NORKS' own smartmobe pegged as Chinese landfill Android

Fake kit in the hermit kingdom? That's just Kim Jong-un-believable!

North Korea’s first “home-grown” smartphone, revealed with much pride and hyperbole by state media last year, appears to be little more than a made-in-China piece of landfill Android.

In news which will come as little surprise to anyone outside the hermit kingdom, a Japanese blogger (via GSM Insider) managed to get hold of the Arirang AS1201 and photographed it side-by-side a Uniscope U1201.

Both handsets look identical, aside from the logo, the network and the slight variation on Android.

As the report says, the Uniscope features what appears to be a Samsung TouchWiz-like UI while the NORKS handset comes with a standard, no frills Android design.

For the record, the Uniscope – which is over a year old now – features a 4.3in 960x540 display, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon quad-core processor, 765.8MB of RAM and 4GB internal storage.

It also has an eight megapixel main camera and a two megapixel front facing version – presumably for all those selfies you might want to take with Dennis Rodman.

It’s also apparently running Android 4.0.4 Jelly Bean.

It isn’t clear for certain whether the Arirang is actually just a rebranded version of the lowly Uniscope, although judging by the product numbers for each it appears as if the North Koreans haven’t done a very good job of covering their tracks.

The Arirang first came to light of course in August last year when chubby despot Kim Jong-un toured the factory in North Korea where the handsets were supposedly manufactured.

That factory at the time looked suspiciously lacking in heavy machinery according to some of the snaps that subsequently appeared online.

El Reg wonders if the Supreme Leader is actually using one of the Arirangs now and not the HTC Desire he was spotted with early last year. ®